Home Network - Powerline Adapter Issues - NETGEAR 1200

[wjbrenn]

So I recently bought a new desktop that I use. As my house is fairly spread out and separated by numerous thickly plastered walls, we have two power-line adapters (Netgear something or others) on either side of the house connect respectively to its own desktop and router.

We had some issues with inconsistency for many years. After numerous diagnostics with the cable company, we bought a better internet speed and got a new modem figuring it would fix the problems. Problems inside were solved, 40mbps d/l & 7mbps d/l on any and all wired and wireless devices. However, about 10 feet on the other side of a wall from one router, the desktop, using a wireless connection was practically unusable. Initially connection was decent with this PC, with 20mpbs d/l and maybe 2 or 3mbps u/l. However something changed, and I did experiment with positioning of the router and restarting everything. I was lucky if I even got connected, let alone achieve a d/l speed of 1mbps. You get the picture.

Well I finally bought a powerline adapter kit, the NETGEAR 1200, and attached it, and it worked immediately. However, speeds were maxing out at 20mbps for D/L and 6mbps U/L. Then later on, I had the same problem with super low speeds. Now, that shortly resolved itself, but I'm unsatisfied with low consistency and lower speed than is being paid for.

Yes it's plugged into the wall.
Yes it's in the same network.

I've even plugged in this specific adapter inside and it gets the same speeds as inside.

Help me? Thanks I really appreciate it.

~Fed up.

 

[jossrik]

Well, few things... Powerline adapters are susceptible to wire conditions and your throughput can vary circuit to circuit, even if you're just on the otherside of the wall, if it's a different circuit you'll get lower speeds. The advertised speeds are "best case scenario", also, to get the max speeds everywhere, everywhere needs to be on the same lvl. If you have 40dl speed, that will be your cap, and that's in bits not bytes, so you'll get roughly 1/8 advertised throughput. This varies ISP to ISP, can vary by location, and even time of day. This higher the Mhz of the wireless router, the less penetration it will get, for example, on the 5Ghz band you pretty well have to be line of sight to get a good reliable connection, whereas the 2.4Ghz band will get some penetration through the wall. Keep in mind, the power that's going to your antenna to and from your router will have effect on wireless connection. This can vary unit to unit, some routers you can up your antenna power, as well as some USB dongles, and I'm sure PCI wireless cards.

 

[wjbrenn]

Well, few things... Powerline adapters are susceptible to wire conditions and your throughput can vary circuit to circuit, even if you're just on the otherside of the wall, if it's a different circuit you'll get lower speeds. The advertised speeds are "best case scenario", also, to get the max speeds everywhere, everywhere needs to be on the same lvl. If you have 40dl speed, that will be your cap, and that's in bits not bytes, so you'll get roughly 1/8 advertised throughput. This varies ISP to ISP, can vary by location, and even time of day. This higher the Mhz of the wireless router, the less penetration it will get, for example, on the 5Ghz band you pretty well have to be line of sight to get a good reliable connection, whereas the 2.4Ghz band will get some penetration through the wall. Keep in mind, the power that's going to your antenna to and from your router will have effect on wireless connection. This can vary unit to unit, some routers you can up your antenna power, as well as some USB dongles, and I'm sure PCI wireless cards.

I understand that speed advertisements are somewhat false, but the other two get my exact download speeds and they're also on very different circuits, meanwhile the third gets half that. Also my modem allows for both 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz bands.

I'm pretty turned off on trying to work things out with WiFi also.

It must be on a different circuit, however what I'm confused about is how the powerline adapter communicates almost flawlessly from the first adapter to the second adapter, which are for sure on different circuits as well, but then I get half that download speed on the third one? It's a shame.

 

[jossrik]

Well, few things... Powerline adapters are susceptible to wire conditions and your throughput can vary circuit to circuit, even if you're just on the otherside of the wall, if it's a different circuit you'll get lower speeds. The advertised speeds are "best case scenario", also, to get the max speeds everywhere, everywhere needs to be on the same lvl. If you have 40dl speed, that will be your cap, and that's in bits not bytes, so you'll get roughly 1/8 advertised throughput. This varies ISP to ISP, can vary by location, and even time of day. This higher the Mhz of the wireless router, the less penetration it will get, for example, on the 5Ghz band you pretty well have to be line of sight to get a good reliable connection, whereas the 2.4Ghz band will get some penetration through the wall. Keep in mind, the power that's going to your antenna to and from your router will have effect on wireless connection. This can vary unit to unit, some routers you can up your antenna power, as well as some USB dongles, and I'm sure PCI wireless cards.

I understand that speed advertisements are somewhat false, but the other two get my exact download speeds and they're also on very different circuits, meanwhile the third gets half that. Also my modem allows for both 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz bands.

I'm pretty turned off on trying to work things out with WiFi also.

It must be on a different circuit, however what I'm confused about is how the powerline adapter communicates almost flawlessly from the first adapter to the second adapter, which are for sure on different circuits as well, but then I get half that download speed on the third one? It's a shame.

Ya, I have limited experience with powerline adapters, I have the netgear 1200 pair, one at the wireless router, and the other straight into my computer and I get 90Mbs DL, 15 UL on a 75Mbs cable connection. It's a wireless N 300 router, Asus, and the hallway is line of sight, I ran antennas into the hallway and still got a pretty inconsistent slow connection, figured I'd try the powerline connectors, 6 months, so far great... Maybe over 6 months now. Anyhow, with the powerlines from what I've read, even stuff like bends in the cable can hack away at speed and reliability, and from what I've read, getting them to work at all on different circuits is voodoo magic of some sort, mine is on a different circuit, but all out wiring is top notch. Do you have it on a surge protector maybe? Powerlines need to go straight into the wall, and are very susceptible to surge ruining them. Maybe you just got a bum one, that's possible too. Have you tried switching them around?

 

[wjbrenn]

Yes I have switched them around so I know it isn't a bum one, but I'll do some more investigation soon... I'll get back to you.

 

[colecaz]

Unplug everything from the outlets where the powerline adapters are plugged in and see if things improve. Other things plugged into the same Outlet as the powerline can sap it's signal.

 

[wjbrenn]

Unplug everything from the outlets where the powerline adapters are plugged in and see if things improve. Other things plugged into the same Outlet as the powerline can sap it's signal.

Unfortunately I cannot do this because my computer on a surge protector is what is plugged into the wall :/

 

[colecaz]

Likely the surge suppressor is hurting performance. They have components across the power lines to suppress surges that also suppress the powerline signals. Try an extension cord from the surge suppressor to another outlet across the room and see if that helps. I know getting things off the outlet with the powerline sure helped mine.